One up for peer review

Femi Falana, SAN’s criticism of the senior Bar is good for self-cleansing

The allegation by Femi Falana, SAN, that some senior members of the Bar often collude to subvert justice instead of enthrone it, could be criticised on many fronts, the foremost of which is the lawyer’s creed.

Mr. Falana, the rights activist, was speaking in Lagos at a workshop with the theme, “Promoting Ethics and Integrity in the Courts System and Improving Citizens’ Access to Justice”, put together by the Socio-Economic Rights and Accountability Project (SERAP), in conjunction with the Royal Dutch Embassy in Nigeria.

The lawyer’s creed gifts everyone the right to legal representation, no matter how heinous the alleged crime is perceived. The reason is simple. Under the law that Nigeria and most of the civilised world operate, every accused person is presumed innocent until otherwise proven by a court of competent jurisdiction. The presumed innocence, it would appear, is less to encourage crime but more to ensure that whoever is accused has his guilt – or innocence – proved in the open court, so that everyone gets justice: the accused, the injured and the society.

If innocence is presumed, therefore, there cannot be any logical moral grandstanding over a brief a counsel should or should not take. This moral high horse, no matter how desirable for societal sanity, has already given way to access to justice, rigour of proof and equity before the law.

To this extent therefore, Mr. Falana’s trenchant criticism stood on slippery grounds. A senior lawyer that he is, he cannot in all conscience condemn others for doing their professional duties, even if their perceived morality rankles Mr. Falana – as do many.

Still, a lawyer’s total submission to his professional creed does not justify unbridled cynicism, which sets many lawyers on the extreme path of playing pranks to cripple justice, or winning cases at all cost, even if by that justice is openly, cynically and unconscionably subverted. That, if the truth must be told, is sickeningly common here. To the extent that such unscrupulous conducts rubbish the judiciary and run the risk of triggering anarchy, everyone should share Mr. Falana’s concern.

That any lawyer is merrily guilty of such conduct is bad enough. That some senior lawyers, senior advocates of Nigeria, luxuriate in this cynical practice is just intolerable, at least on two fronts.

One: If gold rusts, what would iron do, goes the sharp rebuke by English poet, Geoffrey Chaucer – if senior lawyers treat justice with levity, how would the general society not develop cynicism, the sort that has contempt for the court system, undermines the rule of law and promotes eventual anarchy?

Then two: senior lawyers are role models for the juniors. If they show such professional waywardness, what paths would the future senior lawyers tread: the wide and merry way that leads to perdition?

It is from this crucial prism that Mr. Falana earns praise for his courage, particularly for someone not exactly a golden boy with the establishment; which perhaps explains his long delayed admission into the body of SAN. In a country where privilege is often regarded as a cult of silence, even if things are going irredeemably wrong, Mr. Falana has proved his consistent self as a patriot and social critic.

However, fellow wigs should not see these point-blank criticisms – Mr. Falana named names and cases, in which his observed abhorrent practices took place – as wild disapproval from a gadfly. On the contrary, they should regard it as welcome peer review and criticism. The James Ibori, Siemens, Panalpina scandals, Erastus Akingbola and Halliburton cases that he cited vividly drive the point home.

Everyone in Nigeria’s judicial system must join hands to save the Nigerian judiciary form ridicule. Mr. Falana’s call is as good as any to start the rescue mission. The society can only be better for it.